Page 342 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

“I’m surprised your friend with the badge didn’t join you.” She made no motion toward Hank. Elaine jerked around in her chair as though she hadn’t even noticed the uniformed man who’d come in with him.

Jacob gave the waitress his order and poured his coffee from the thermos pot on the table. “I’m putting together kind of a coffee table book. Photographs that I take myself, along with stories that delve into people’s lives.”

“And you got more than you bargained for with my brother?”

“Depends how much of what he shared with me was the truth.” Some people enjoyed embellishing the past, though usually that involved posting online. Not telling a sordid tale that amounted to a confession of murder.

Elaine leaned forward. “Is your friend over there going to arrest an old man in a retirement home?”

“Even if it’s true, how are the police going to find evidence?” Unless these women knew something he didn’t.

The old lady watched him. Jennie Perkins had struck out on her own and married fairly early after she left her parents’ house—before she even turned eighteen. She’d distanced herself from the family and maybe never completely reconnected. Though, she had remained local.

Jacob studied her. “Do you have any insight you can share into your brother?”

The waitress brought their food. Jacob waited through those first few bites, unwilling to rush Jennie if she wanted time to think it over.

Eventually, she said, “Carl was always bad news. There was just something…wrong with him. I never could put my finger on it. Figured it wasn’t worth sticking around, not after Timmy leftus.” She shook her head, the skin of her neck waving with the motion. “Things happened back then. My memory has become cloudy.”

Jacob wasn’t entirely sure that was true. She was more the kind of person who adjusted the truth to suit her needs. Meanwhile, her brother admitted to delivering a killing blow to his mother.

After all, Carl had told Jacob that Jennie was the one who pushed Timmy out of the tree. It could be that whatever stained one had affected them all.

Either way, Jacob was going to drop Mr. Harris from the book. There was nothing in him that desired to uncover a decades-old mystery. To reveal possible murder—maybe more than one.

He wasn’t going to tell a story and be revealed as a liar, whether he added the disclaimer that the words were not his but what he had been told. He wasn’t a reporter. People could say whatever they wanted to about their own lives. Everyone embellished a little. Or they told outright fabrications.

The alternative was to withdraw entirely and never tell anyone anything.

He wondered what Addie told people about what happened to them. Or what Hank said about his experiences in the cabin where he’d been trapped with his girlfriend at the time. Hank’s girlfriend had been killed, but that didn’t stop the guy from trying to save other people. Something he respected about his friend.

Jacob chose to give a voice to those whose stories had never been told. Maybe so people would quit trying to hear his tale. The one he had no intention of telling.

No one wanted to be trapped by the past, but maybe it was unavoidable. Clearly whatever had happened to Jennie Perkins, she held onto some part of it even now.

Elaine Perkins glanced at her grandmother. “You get that we know you’re lying, right? You’ve been sharp as a tack since my first memory of you, and that has not diminished even a fraction.”

Jennie glanced aside at the younger woman.

Jacob waited, but she said nothing. He volunteered something that might serve to tug her from her malaise. “Was there a tree in your backyard? One that you played in as children?”

“Until Carl pushed Timmy off a branch. After that we weren’t allowed to climb it.” Jennie Perkins pushed a sausage around her plate. “Timmy was never the same after that. He just seemed to fade out, and dad had enough. The doctor couldn’t find anything wrong with him. Dad made Timmy sleep in the shed so we didn’t all have to hear him crying all night about the phantom pain.”

Elaine winced.

He was inclined to agree with the sentiment behind that.

Jacob saw something in the older woman’s expression. “He died out there, didn’t he?”

“Because Carl helped him along.” Jennie frowned, the wrinkles on her face scrunched. “I was looking out my window when I saw him go into the shed with a pillow. I thought maybe he felt bad about what he did so he was going to stay with Timmy.”

“You think he smothered him with a pillow or something?” Elaine gaped. “That’s insane! People don’t do that.”

Jacob shrugged one shoulder. “You’d be surprised what people do.”

After all, he’d lived it for two days before the FBI busted in, and they were rescued. A dangerous killer was sent to prison for the rest of his life. The boot on the town’s throat was lifted, and people began to live their lives again.

Jennie lifted her gaze and met his.

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